FOX News Features Fauquier Hospital Medical Camps

August 5, 2013

Colleen Shanney, clinical services technician at Fauquier Health and paramedic with the Warrenton Volunteer Fire Company, shows medical camp students how to secure an accident victim on a backboard. The “victim” is Holly Morris of the Holly Live show on Fox News DC.

Fauquier Hospital was featured on FOX DC television the morning of Wednesday, July 24. The show Holly Live, with FOX host Holly Morris, highlighted Fauquier Hospital’s summer medical camps for teens. Here's the video.

Three segments included interviews with campers and medical professionals, with a few surprises.

This is the sixth year that Fauquier Hospital has held its medical camps for students aged 13-18; the camps allowed 135 teens to experience the medical field in a hands-on and interactive way this summer. Students with a serious interest in the medical field are able to try their hand at skills such as: blood typing, intubating (putting a tube down a patient’s throat), starting an IV, mixing medications, and participating in a mock code.

For 2013, the camp has added a third-level session for those 15 and over who have attended sessions one and two in previous years. Campers in the third session find out more about various physician specialties, including the growing field of telemedicine, and spend time in the nursing simulation lab at Lord Fairfax Community College.

Level 1 medical camp activities include typing blood in the lab, suturing, learning to intubate a patient, starting an IV, mixing medications in the pharmacy, and taking a behind-the-scenes tour of the medical imaging department. Students participate in a mock code in the emergency department, learn to calculate the appropriate equipment and medication dosage for pediatric patients, learn to take blood pressure, listen to heart and lung sounds, and harvest a cornea from a human eye.

Level 2 activities include all of the following on the first day: advanced suturing, casting (and cutting the cast off using the cast saw), wound care, and a backboarding and collaring session where students will learn to extricate an accident victim from a vehicle. On the second day, students complete a dissection, learn to do injections and blood draws, precipitate their DNA from a cheek swab, and participate in a discussion about medical ethics.

Level 3 medical camp activities include using the telemedicine equipment to connect to a neurologist, just as an emergency department doctor would if a patient was suspected of having a stroke, learning to perform nursing assessments, and participating in simulated scenarios in the nursing lab at Lord Fairfax Community College. A mobile bio-skills lab will be on site on July 31 to provide students with more hands-on experience in an operating room environment.

Students may apply to medical camp each March and April and camps take place in June, July and August.